Beltane Garlic Moon
Opening the doors of perception. Thomas Huxley, I believe, on mescaline. Now, I’ve done my share of mescaline, but there are other ways to fling open the doors. I did one this morning.
The MIA does tours for the blind called touch tours. Training was this morning and I attended. That means I put on those vaguely bluish/purplish nitrile gloves (safer for the art than the old cotton gloves, I’m told.) and got to run my hands all over Theseus and the Centaur by Barye. What a rush.
Whenever kids come to the museum, the first thing we tell them is: “The one foot rule. Look with your eyes, not with your hands.” For one inclined to transgress to begin with, this license to touch was wonderful.
I felt Theseus muscled legs, the Centaurs upper body curved back and his head held down by Theseus’ hand on his throat. I felt the hooves of the Centaur digging in, stabilizing him during this fight. The weapon that Theseus holds, ready to split the Centaur’s skull has a tension in it as it expresses an arc toward the Centaur’s head.
It was a sensual delight to touch this bronze statue and I loved it.
We also used tactile boards, basically simplifications of paintings using raised marks on a white board that depict the essential elements of the work. The contact between the blind person and the art then becomes an exchange between the raised elements–in this case, the sun, the mountains, the olive trees and their shadows–in Vincent Van Gogh’s, Olive Grove and the docent’s description of the painting as a supplement.
Then, last, we began to learn the art of verbal description. In this case there is no prop, no statue, rather a work that the docent describes in as much detail as possible. This requires a vocabulary of rich imagery and particular clarity.
The doors of perception opened for me when I put on those gloves and touched, with my eyes closed, Barye’s statue and as I listened, eyes closed to the interaction between the tactile board and the painting itself.
I got something, something unique and special, but it was very different from the experience I have visually. Difficult to describe, but very different. More a mental mapping of volume, space, a mind’s jigsaw puzzle to fit the information from statute or tactile board with the descriptions and help of the docent. A new way of interacting with the art.
